


Situational

by Person



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Ficlets, Kink Meme, many situations
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-05-09
Updated: 2011-05-09
Packaged: 2017-10-19 05:06:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/197228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Person/pseuds/Person
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their worlds change, but they remain constant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Angst

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a kink meme request with a list of themes to write fics for your favorite couple around, so it'll be a bunch of ficlets instead of one long continuing story.

Under normal circumstances he would never have turned his back on Vriska for fear that he'd find himself with a knife stuck in it a moment later, but in her current state he thought he'd have no reason to worry if he began choosing the parts for her new arm while Aurthour tended to the mess that was her eye socket. Even if she'd had enough strength left in her to make a move against him he knew that she wouldn't do a thing as long as she still needed him to tend to her, and he could build precautions into her new arm to ensure that she couldn't attack directly even once she was mended.

Those were the right and proper reasons he could give for allowing Vriska her privacy. It need have nothing to do with how dejected she looked. It could almost be pitiable, had his red emotions not already been spent on targets he found far preferable, even if by all rights the color of her blood should have made her more deserving.

He was just sorting out the tools he would need when she said in a low voice, challenge clear in it even as it cracked with pain, "Nobody's even told you she's dead, have they?"

He glanced reflexively out one of his windows, to where the landscape was broken by an unenviable view straight down into her lusus' gristly lair, going back over the recent victims. Had he known one of them and been unable to tell from that distance? "Who?"

"Ha, I knew they wouldn't. You think you're soooooooo much better than them, but I bet they look down on you even more than you do on them. They think you're just as bad as I am!" She laughed, a bitter mocking sound, before she went on, "You know who I was going out with tonight. Who do you _think_?"

A cold chill shook through him, but he did his best to shake it off so he could hold onto hope. "If you are saying that you've killed Terezi in response to her attack, well done I suppose. No one could deny that it was your right too--"

"Aradia, you dumbass!"

"Language," he said automatically, his mind shocked into too much blankness to make anything but the most reflexive reply.

Killing Aradia was even more her right than killing Terezi would have been, of course. She wouldn't have even needed a reason beyond the whim of a moment, not when her blood was noble blue and Aradia's the lowest shade of red he'd ever seen. It was all right and proper, so why should he feel as if he needed to run for the toilet and vomit up everything he'd eaten for days.

He whipped his head around to look out the window again, frantically searching for any new forms among the remains that he had missed with his earlier glimpse, for any sign of movement among them unlikely though it might be. He had seen it happen before, if rarely; if Vriska arrived home with her latest prey while her lusus was sleeping whomever it was would remain safe until it woke up, although it didn't do them much good when they were still trapped in a pit. But with his strength he could--

"That's not how it happened, so stop thinking about playing hero." The arm she still had was curled over her stomach and she was doing her best to stare at him defiantly with only one eye. "I'm only telling you in case Sis tries to get more revenge while you're putting my arm on. I'd rather know if you're gonna freak out right now, not when I have an 'accident' on the operating table. So what'll it _be_ , Equius? Are you gonna be a giiiiiiiiant hypocrite and attack me even though she's just a red-blood, or will you keep Terezi away if she comes after me when I'm out cold?" She pushed herself to her feet, swaying for a moment then catching herself and stepping up to poke him in the chest. "Kill me now if you're going to, hypocrite. Time to get all the revenge tonight over with."

He stared down at her, his hands curling into tight fists at his side. It would be a simple matter to give into her taunting, no real effort at all and her body would be smashed beyond recognition. But... he couldn't. She was entirely correct. He was a man of conviction, and it would be brazen hypocrisy to attack her for acting in a manner which was proper for their class. What did it matter if someone with sludge where their blood should be died? Their lives were too short to matter in the first place.

Even if it was Aradia. Even if it seemed to matter very much that he would never see her again. That she would never have the chance to make a find on one of her digs that would let her name be known forever even when her life was over in a flash. That she was gone.

He closed his eyes and turned back to his tools. "It will take me a few days to complete your arm. If you need sanctuary until then Aurthour will show you to a room." And he knew that Aurthour would understand without needing to be told that it should be a room where he wouldn't be likely to see her until he was ready to attach the new limb.

While she was lead away Equius glanced at the notes he had been jotting down while he collected parts, and neatly crossed out the ones he'd made on his planned precautions. He had only planned to make it go slack if she ever attempted to raise it against him, but suddenly a different method seemed more fitting. She shouldn't hold it against him when she learned what she had done; at their rank if he did her a favor it was his right to ensure she wouldn't doublecross him once he was done by whatever method he thought best. It needn't have anything to do with Aradia at all.

Next to the crossed out lines he made a simple two word note--'Control chip'--and drew an arrow next to it to remind him that completing it would be his top priority.


	2. Alternate Universe (superheroes, also humans)

The Maid of Time stood looking down over her city from a narrow wall encircling a rooftop, her cape flapping in the wind. She held a newspaper in one hand, headlines crossed out here and there throughout it. Even as she stood there she could be found all throughout the city, consulting the paper as she lie in wait to stop a carjacking here, an assault there, every crime that the local journalists would have seen fit to report or tuck away in the police notices the next morning.

It wouldn't be enough, of course. However many crimes she stopped new ones would only take their place, and unless something especially terrible occurred those ones would be left to happen; she would only ever undo the crimes that were originally meant to happen on any given night. It was a difficult rule, one that could be painful to follow when she knew that she could do so much more if she allowed herself to, but she knew that it was necessary. She could spend her entire life living through a single night again and again if she let herself, the city gradually filling with repetitions of her until there was a Maid of Time on every street corner, and there would still be more to accomplish.

Besides, by living every night twice and the hours within them even more often she was already burning thorough her life at over than twice the rate of normal people. If she tried preventing every single crime every single night her vigilante career would be over within weeks, when with luck she would last at least a decade more before she was too old to continue.

Maybe longer, if she had many more nights as lucky as that one had been. She'd made every bust on her first try, her passage through the night one continuous looping line through time without needing to splinter off extraneous hers to fix mistakes. Any night when her own personal mass grave didn't grow by several bodies when time noticed that there were too many of her around and fixed the problem was a good one by her standards.

It was early in the evening to anyone else's way of judging time, but she was on her last stop of the night. It would seem an idiotic choice to end the night to someone without all the facts that she had; the front page story, a masked man with superhuman strength who broke--would break, would have broken--into a bank. He didn't steal anything, just tore the place to pieces until it looked like a wrecking ball had somehow smashed through it without breaking the outer walls then left, and he had made no effort to avoid the security cameras so there were pictures plastered all over the paper showcasing his incredible strength and ensuring that she knew _exactly_ what she would be facing.

She was no more durable than any other person, or at least any other person who'd spent years training as a fighter so she could make a career of superheroics without getting her butt handed to her on a regular basis. She was exhausted, her long night draining her until she felt like she could fall asleep at any moment. She was in no state to put up a fight against some new supervillain who had appeared in town.

But she knew, though nobody else ever would, that he was actually in no way 'new'. And she knew just as well that whatever state she was in she would still walk away from their confrontation entirely unharmed.

It wasn't a surprise to her at all when she heard a cultured voice behind her say, "I give up. I am entirely in your power."

She turned, careful not to lose her footing, and looked down on him. "Void."

He frowned slightly as he walked up to the wall, reaching up to hold her by the waist and gently lift her down. "Don't call me that. It sounds so crass."

"You're being a supervillain. It's your supervillain name. I'm not the one who chose it."

"Neither am I," he reminded her, though she hadn't forgotten. She'd heard the story before, how it came from the same cousin who had made his ridiculous costume--nothing but a cowl with cat ears and a mask over whatever neat business suit he'd worn to work--after she'd spent a good half-hour trying to talk him into various animal names. She'd finally drudged up the name while thinking of a prosecutor friend of hers, he could be Void because all charges the Maid of Time could make against him would _be_ void if his plan worked, and it had been preferable to 'Mr. Mittens' so he'd gone with it. "Besides which, I am not being a supervillain. What am I doing that you could call villainous? Is it a crime to indulge in an embarrassing habit of costume play on the roof of my own building?" He pushed the mask and cowl from his head, letting them drop to the floor.

She rolled her eyes at him. They both knew what he would have done if she hadn't appeared, and they also both knew that there was nothing to be done about it. Because of her he had never committed a single crime, though it was also because of her that he'd committed several dozens in timelines that no longer existed. She wouldn't punish him over things he hadn't done. "One day," she told him, "I will arrive a little late, and everyone will learn the truth about you."

"No you won't," he said with obnoxious certainty, made worse because she knew he was right. "I have a gift for you."

"Of course you do," she said dryly. It seemed that he always did, flowers and jewelry and the usual trinkets of courting at first until he realized that they had little appeal to her and began putting more thought into it; a new whip, a good pair of running shoes, a place to rest.

This time it was a new hooded cape, one that looked almost exactly the same as the one she was wearing but she could feel at once that the fabric quality was much better than the cheap cotton cloth she'd sewn the other out of. It actually felt like it might keep her warm, or dry on wet nights, instead of just keeping her face hidden in its shadows.

"I'd noticed that the one you're wearing is getting ragged, and I won't have you looking like you need to dress in tatters." He didn't ask permission before reaching out untie her old cape and push it from her shoulders, freeing the length of her hair and revealing her face. Back in the days when the strange situation between them was still new she would have jumped away before his hand could reach her, set on keeping her identity safe. But she'd long since stopped caring, justifying it to herself with the fact that he couldn't _possibly_ recognize her--Aradia Megido lived the life of a hermit outside of the city to keep anyone from noticing how quickly she aged, and he was much too old to have known her back when she'd still lived within the city and the normal flow of time--that he seemed to want only to horde her face for himself and not sell it to her enemies, and that she knew who _he_ was so it was only making things a little more fair between them.

And maybe it _did_ have a little to do with the way his hand brushing the nape of her neck as he lifted her hair to tuck it into her new hood made her quiver inside, or how she couldn't help but lean into the kiss he brushed across her forehead as he settled it neatly in place.

"Now," he said, smoothly sliding his hand into the small of her back to press her towards the door leading in from the roof, "I came out because dinner is ready. I think that you'll enjoy it, Aurthour outdid himself tonight."

"You say that every time I'm here."

"It's true every time you're here. He is outstanding at his job." He held the door for her, and as she passed through it he added in a low voice, "And, as always, if you'll only agree to move into your room here on a permanent basis I'll stop needing to go to such drastic lengths to contact you."

She knew that just by entering the building she was encouraging him too much. And that responding to the advances of a man who thought wrecking buildings was a good way to catch her eye was an incredible display of bad judgment. Once she had been good at brushing him off; it had taken him months to even talk her into at least splitting a turkey sandwich with him while they stayed in the open space of the roof. But sandwiches had become sandwiches and desserts, and then drinks as well, one drizzly night it had seemed like going in just as far as the stairwell was the obvious thing to do, and then suddenly all attempts at maintaining distance vanished until some nights she found herself considering visiting his penthouse for dinner even when he hadn't done a thing.

There was good food, always. There was a warm soft bed that seemed to be the only place in the world comfortable enough that she could sleep peacefully and deep until all the built up exhaustion of so many sleepless nights drained out of her. There was, more and more often even though she knew it was capping off all the smaller displays of bad judgment she showed when it came to him with the biggest one of all, a warm firm body wrapped around her own.

And she already knew, without any need to glance forward through time, that one day she'd almost certainly give into his repeated requests to stay. But that time hadn't come just yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone wondering how about the wibbly wobbly timey-wimey aspects of this, here's how they're going in my head; just like in canon Aradia started her time travel shenanigans when she was 13. To outside observers three years have gone on since then, but along her own personal timeline it's been close to six, putting her physically and more-or-less mentally at about twenty. Equius is roughly 25-26, but she'll be overtaking him in a few more years and he's worked out what her powers are well enough to be fully aware of that.


	3. Crossover (Shadow of the Colossus, fusion-style)

Aurthour kept up a slow and steady walk beneath him, as if he sensed from Equius how careful he needed to be of his burden, but for the first time in Equius' life he was unable to let go of all his cares and simply enjoy riding. It didn't matter how beautiful the lands they passed through were, or how bright and warm the day was.

All that mattered was the precious bundle that he held in his arms and their destination, the one place where things might be set right.

At any other time he would have scoffed if he heard of someone setting all their hopes on an obscure piece of folklore. There was no real reason to think there could be any truth to it. Though he would acknowledge that the sword did bend light which struck it strangely, until the day that he'd stolen it he would have been the first to come up with excuses for it. A type of metalworking which had been lost since the day it was forged, perhaps, a trick of the blade that made it focus light more strongly than it seemed it should be capable of. You didn't need shattered gods to have a good hand with metal; he did himself, and all his faith was tied up in himself and other mortal men and women.

And in one who was no longer counted among their numbers. In that one most of all.

After days of riding he reached it at last, the great stone bridge mentioned in the story. Just the sight of it, and the mammoth castle beyond, were enough to raise his hopes higher than ever. All people had been forbidden from visiting the valley for centuries, and he found it difficult to believe that the primitive masses of those long-ago days could have built anything so grand.

Even the thumping of his horse's hooves hitting stone sounded more muted as they crossed the bridge and entered the massive doors they found on the other end, as though Aurthour somehow realized that they were in a place of reverence and was attempting to show respect. There was a sense of anticipation in the air, like something was watching him and waiting eagerly to see what he would do, but he wrote it off to his own eagerness to learn whether there was any truth to the legends.

They walked slowly down a wide spiraling staircase, its incline so gentle that his horse had no difficulties at all climbing down it, and at the bottom found that it opened into a great hall lined with towering statues. And at the end there was his goal at last, a stone bed set on a raised section of the floor.

He noticed that it had a marking like a gear carved into it as he carried the bundle he'd brought with him all that way up to it. It seemed like a good omen. He laid the bundle right over the marking and opened it revealing what was inside, the scorched and twisted remains of a robot girl.

He'd taken care to gather every piece which was still large enough to find, and laid them out as close as he could get them to where they would be if her body was well and whole and filled by her spirit once more. It was an easy enough task; he had built her body to begin with, and knew where every piece should go.

The moment the last piece of her was in its place he heard Aurthour begin to frantically whinny behind him and spun to see what was wrong. For a moment he could hardly believe what he was seeing, the shadows of hornless men lurching towards him even though there was no one there to cast them, but then he remembered himself, remembered the story, and drew the sword.

It flared when the sunlight hit it and the shadows shied away, vanishing into the floor as if they'd never been there. And a moment later all the hopes he'd clung to were rewarded when a hole in the ceiling blazed with brilliant light, and a voice that seemed to fill his entire mind said, "We are Skaia. Why have you trespassed on Our land, thou who bears the Ancient Sword?"

Equius stood up straight and gestured back to the stone bed. "I have brought the body of a girl who has exploded before her time. If you will bring her back, I will do anything in exchange."

Skaia was silent for a time, its light wavering uncertainly, and it sounded more hesitant that he would expect from a being which was meant to be a god when it said, "Thou wish for Us to heal... a statue?"

"A robot," he corrected. "And she was alive before that she was alive. If you can only bring her back in her flesh, that is more than acceptable. I would not say 'neigh' to the arrangement even if you could only bring back her ghost."

Its light continued to flicker for a moment more, than grew steady as it seemed to come to a decision. "Though the law of mortals states that souls, once lost, cannot be reclaimed... With that sword, it may not be impossible. But there will be a task to perform, and the maiden's soul will not come cheaply. Will thou agree to this?"

"I have already said I will do anything. Anything will be an equitable exchange."

"Very well." It began detailing what it expected of him, and Equius listened with half an ear as he glanced back at the remains on the bed once more. Even the fact that what it wanted seemed to involve a great deal of slaughtering innocent creatures wasn't enough to make him second-guess his decision.

'Wait a little longer, Aradia,' he thought towards her. 'I will restore you again before much longer.'


End file.
